ive rooms of the Wyoming
Geological Survey building still hold field notes, rocks and memorabilia
from David Love's life. "It's a monument to chaos," he says. "I call
it the stratified wilderness."

It makes sense that Love — along with
his son, geologist Charles Love — is rallying his fellow geologists
to start preserving their personal libraries, field notes and various collections.
It makes sense because David Love has a history of enthusiastically embracing
a cause and taking charge of a project, and because he himself has acquired
more than 55 years of field notes and photos of his own adventures and
the details of Wyoming’s geology and landscape.

Retired in name only, Love is 86 years old, a father of four, scientist
emeritus with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and regarded by his colleagues
as one of Wyoming’s most important geologists. His worn, brown boots and
bolo tie confirm his life-long love for his native state and its geology
— most of which he’s mapped or made sure was mapped. He spent his childhood
in Wyoming’s vast spaces and most of his adult life in the field. He is
one of the great Rocky Mountain field geologists and has been studying
Wyoming’s geology since at least 1942, when he started working with the
USGS. Even though he “retired” in 1987, he is still working, advocating
one cause or another, occupying an office in the Wyoming Geological Survey
building and teaching at the University of Wyoming and other universities.
The university appointed him an adjunct professor without salary. He estimates
he’s trained 25 geologists.

The American Geological Institute last year awarded Love its first Legendary
Geoscientist Award, which recognizes a geoscientist who has produced scientific
achievements and service to the earth sciences that have lasting, historic
value.

Accepting the award in October during the annual meeting of the Geological
Society of America, Love gave an audience of geoscientists two charges:
first, to archive their own collections of field notes and photos; and
second, to think beyond their disciplines and consider the relationship
between geology and human health. “I don’t think we could make a better
contribution to geology and human health than to tie them together,” he
said.

Love has been advocating the application of geology to human health
since at least 1949, when he and other geologists were snowed in for nine
days during a meeting in Salt Lake City. It was an international conference
meant to address the effect of poisonous trace elements — selenium, molybdenum
and tellurium, for example — on people and animals, and what geology could
contribute to understanding it.

Love has pursued this mission during his entire career. He gave many
talks on the subject, the first one in 1978 at the University of Washington.
“Human environment, good and bad, starts with the rock, coupled with the
other two major necessities, water and air,” Love said in a 1984 Edison
Foundation Distinguished Lecture, a talk he gave again several times at
many universities. “Ruin one of these three basic essentials and humanity
is in deep trouble.” He’s been known to get particularly upset about how
selenium, which woody asters and other vegetation not native to Wyoming
absorb from underlying soils, can make its way from plants to animals to
humans. Selenium is toxic in large amounts, causing health problems similar
to those caused by arsenic, such as lung and liver damage.

Love’s sense of the relationship among these four elements — water,
air, rocks and the human environment — began long before 1949. He says
he first saw it when he was growing up on the Love Ranch in Wyoming. “You
could see the intertwining of all the facets of nature there,” he says.

He was born on April 17, 1913, as John David Love to ranch owners John
G. and Ethel P. Love. He was raised in a log cabin 12 miles from Wyoming’s
geographic center and 5,670 feet above sea level. He spent his childhood
on the Wind River Basin south of Riverton, Wyo. “As a small boy with no
playmates except my brother, 18 months older, my world revolved around
my parents, wild range cattle, bronky horses and hard-bitten cowboys,”
Love recounted when he accepted honorary membership from the American Association
of Petroleum Geologists in 1995.

He grew up seeing the results of geologic processes, but began officially
studying it when he started taking geology classes in 1929 at the University
of Wyoming. He studied with geology professor Samuel Knight, whom Love
still cites as a strong influence.

He earned his bachelor’s degree (1933) and master’s degree (1934) at
the University of Wyoming and then went to Yale University to earn his
doctorate. Before he left Wyoming, though, he met fellow geology student
Jane S. Matteson, whom he married in 1940. They celebrate their 60th wedding
anniversary June 1. “We decided way back that this was going to be permanent,”
he said in a recent phone interview.

After he earned his doctorate in 1938, Love spent a summer working with
Arthur Baker, another geologist he cites as a strong influence, for the
USGS in the Wasatch Mountains. From there he spent four years in the mid-continent
and southeastern United States doing subsurface and geologic mapping for
Shell Oil Co. In 1942, he found himself back in Wyoming as party chief
of the Mineral Deposits Branch of the USGS. Part of what brought Love back
to Wyoming was his knowledge of the stratigraphic occurrence of vanadium
ore in the state. Vanadium was needed for the armor plates protecting U.S.
planes, tanks and battleships used for World War II fighting. In 1943 Love
opened the USGS Laramie field office to run the survey’s Fuel Branch as
supervisor of geological investigations aimed at enhancing domestic petroleum
exploration during and after the War.

He would spend 45 years with the survey, most of that time mapping Wyoming
geology and finding its resources. Even when the USGS closed the Laramie
office in 1987, Love refused to leave Wyoming for a different survey office.
Gary Glass, then the state geologist, let Love hole up in the Wyoming Geologic
Survey building.

It wasn't the first time he had made a choice to keep his freedom to
explore Wyoming’s geology. Word has it that after Love discovered the Pumpkin
Buttes uranium district in 1951, one company offered him $1 million to
leave the USGS and stake out a claim for it at Pumpkin Buttes. But he turned
the offer down. “It was tempting,” he remembers. “But it would have been
totally unethical. And it was exciting to have a relatively free hand.”
He and other geologists were explorers and continued searching for other
uranium deposits. Eventually, Love remembers, some 20 companies began mining
Pumpkin Buttes. It was a gold rush uranium style. “It was a wild time.

Love spent most of his career working in the field, and directed the
compilation of the 1955 and 1987 Wyoming state geological maps, still the
only complete maps of the state’s geology today. His later years with the
survey he spent traveling the world looking for gold deposits. In author
John McPhee’s Rising From the Plains, an account of Wyoming geology and
David Love’s life, Love estimates he spent one-quarter of his nights sleeping
under the stars — a conservative estimate.

“I’ve been a lucky person all my life,” he says. "Geology is so exciting.
It doesn’t matter what angle of it you approach. It can be extraordinarily
rewarding. I’m still excited about it, as you can tell.”

Dr. J.
David LoveWyoming State Geological
Survey

Dear Dr. Love:Congratulations on receiving
the American Geological Institute’s Legendary Geoscientist Award! Your
important contributions in the field of geology have done much to benefit
not only the Sate of Wyoming, but the nation. This award is indicative
of the recognition you so richly merit. Dave, you are
the epitome of what we hope for in each of our teachers. You have never
hesitated to share your knowledge, and you have been an inspiration for
hundreds of young, aspiring geologists. Your legacy as a scholar, mentor,
writer and storyteller is extraordinary, and confirms the fact that we
hold you in high esteem. Your many published works on the geology of Wyoming
and elsewhere will forever be recognized by your peers and the public as
primary resources. I take great
personal pleasure in sending congratulations to you on behalf of the citizens
of Wyoming. You truly deserve the designation of Legendary!